About the Translator Hi! I'm Ainikki, a 30-something woman with a graduate degree in English (focus on American English Literature and Middle English Literature). I started self-teaching myself Japanese in September of 2018. My best friend from childhood moved from Korea to Japan to teach English some years back, and I encountered a book that I really wanted to read in the original Japanese. I also knew it would be hard and I wanted to take the language up as a personal challenge. I'm far from fluent, but I'm also not a beginner anymore. How I Translate I use a Rocketbook (endlessly erasable notebook) and erasable pens to create the first draft of the translation. This is often very rough and riddled with running errors in tense (especially) and detailed notes on the order in which to present information, since this often varies between Japanese and English. I translate two chapters, then type up the first one and read it aloud before posting it, then translate another chapter after that. This way, I'm always at least a chapter ahead of schedule, and usually two chapters ahead (in case work/life stuff happens and I need a buffer). Typing up the literally transliterated text is the hardest part. This is the stage where I need to smooth out tenses, tone, character voices, idiomatic expressions, etc. I've learned a lot from Uehashi's other translations into English, but something I take special care with is humor. I don't think that usually comes through as strongly as it should in other translations, because Uehashi can be wickedly, darkly funny even when you least expect it. Violence, battles, politics and history also need special care; Uehashi's battle scenes are often not very long, but contain very specific and pointed details. Her treatises on history can span ten pages or more. Whole novels (Traveler of the Void, Traveler of the Blue Road) have an overarching structure of manipulators and manipulated politicians circling around one another in 400-page games of chicken. When translating the individual chapters, it's sometimes difficult to keep the focus on the whole. I think I can only do this (to an extent, anyway) because I've read this series before, back when my Japanese proficiency was far worse. After transliteration and typing comes posting. I usually edit after I post (bad habit, I know) because it helps me to read it the way someone else would, and I find it hard to catch fossilized errors that I've made in transliteration/typing until after I've let them sit for a couple of days. It's one of the perils of doing your own editing. I'm not perfect. I do mess up. I fix things when I notice that I've messed up, but I don't always catch everything. If you ever spot something obviously wrong or think I should take a closer look at something, please let me know! Why Moribito/Guardian of the Spirit? "Guardian of the Spirit" was the first novel I read in Japanese. It was not the novel that sparked my desire to learn Japanese (that would be Nishio Isshin's Los Angeles BB Murders Case (Death Note)), but it was the novel that served as a milestone for my being able to read long-form Japanese. The first chapter contained 672 words that I didn't know. (I still have the flashcards.) It took me 4 months to read the book, attacking it for 2-3 hours a day. I'd been studying Japanese for about eight months at that point. (Yes, I tried to read a children's novel only four months after beginning my studies. I don't recommend this. It isn't fun.) I managed to get to Japan to visit my friend, where I bought the entire series in Japanese at bookstore in Shinjuku that had eight floors. I had to lug them all back on the train in the rain (my friend did not help enable this somewhat questionable decision...), and on the plane ride back home I read the first third or so of "Guardian of the Dream." And the rest followed from there. It took me about seven months after that to read the series, not getting everything but getting the gist, and I shifted gears toward Classical Japanese for a while--Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, Dazai Osamu, and the like. And then a lovely internet stranger (platypusbutt/Evil Receptionist of Doom) asked me offhandedly if I'd like to translate the series. I decided to try, realized it wasn't nearly as hard as I remembered it to be the first time around, and here we are. If all goes well, most of the series should be translated by 2022. When's the next book/series going to be done? The two short story collections, The Wanderer and Those Who Walk the Flame Road, should be done by October 2022. Where the Wind Takes Us (a post-series novel featuring Balsa and Tanda) should be done by December of 2022. (It's 450 pages long.) There is an additional short story published in a magazine that features the lives of Balsa and Tanda years after the series' ending; I'm trying to get my hands on it. I've also managed to get a copy of the 2 radio plays, and may try my hand at making transcripts for them some time after the main series is complete. Will you translate the first three books? Possibly. The first two have been published in official translation; the third has a very capable fan translation already. But if there's interest in having the same translated "voice" for the series, I'll render the complete series. However, I won't be able to post the first 2 books on this blog (as that would be copyright infringement and I'd never do that to Uehashi-sensei). People desiring those books would need to contact me directly, and prove that they've already supported the official translation--I have no desire to rob Uehashi-sensei, her publishers, or her illustrators/editors. I just want the story to be told. Other questions? Ask me anything! Maybe you want to do this yourself, or want some tips on rendering tricky Japanese? Let me know in the comments. :) Previous Next
May 10, 2025 • Subscribe
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